Former House Speaker and 2012 presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and his wife will head to South Carolina at the end of April for three days, in a move widely seen as a test balloon-floating exercise for the 2016 White House race.

Asked Thursday morning if he's thinking about running for president again, Gingrich said, 'I don't rule it out, but we're not spending any energy on it.'

But the visit to an early primary state seems calculated for maximum spotlight value, coming just days before a crucial House special election. And the distraction may not be what GOP candidate Mark Sanford's handlers want.

Sanford's chief liability is his marital infidelity - the affair with Argentinian journalist María Belén Chapur, now his fiancee. Gingrich, too, has had dalliances with women who were not his wives, and he's now married to one of them.

Add to that dynamic a statewide tea party apparatus that has seen enough of Gingrich, and the move has left some observers wondering just what Newt is really up to.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich squared off against comedian Stephen Colbert in a recent interview on Colbert's Comedy Central show The Colbert Report. Gingrich will visit South Carolina soon, just days before Colbert's sister runs for a US House seat against Mark Sanford, the state's former governor

'For the first time since the 2012 Presidential Preference Primary, Newt & Callista will visit the Palmetto State for a number of events between April 29 and May 1,' a notice on the website of Gingrich's Committee For America now reads. 'More details will be available soon. They look forward to visiting with and thanking the people of South Carolina for their tremendous support and hospitality.'

Gingrich spoke Thursday morning at a breakfast event organized by the conservativeNational Review, acknowledging that the next generation of presidential hopefuls will likely have their day in the sun before he has another bite at the presidential apple.

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'My instinct is that there will be a new generation of ideas, and a new generation of candidates. That's my instinct,' he said, according to the Huffington Post. 'But, you know, I would like to be somebody who plays a role in developing a new generation of ideas.'

That generic statement comes at a time when South Carolina Republicans are gearing up for a very specific special election, pitting the disgraced former GOP governor, Mark Sanford, against Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert.

On May 7 the two will duke it out for the House seat vacated by Republican Tim Scott when he was appointed to fill the US Senate seat held by the retiring Jim DeMint.

Gingrich will arrive in South Carolina barely a week beforehand.

Gingrich won the South Carolina Republican primary election on Jan. 21, 2012 in a shocking outcome driven by support from loyalists in a fractured tea party contingent. A return to the scene of his greatest success that year could signal the start of another presidential run

On The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert (R) blows a kiss to his sister Elizabeth Colbert-Busch (C), who is the Democratic candidate for Congress in South Carolina's 1st Congressional District. Her opponent is Mark Sanford (L), a former governor who left office amid scandal brought on by an extramarital affair

Asked if the Sanford campaign expects Gingrich to make any campaign appearances for the former governor, communications director Joel Sawyer told MailOnline that he hadn't given it any thought.

'This is the first we've heard of him even coming,' Sawyer said in an email.

Gingrich spokesman Woody Hales told MailOnline that the trip to South Carolina 'is a "thank you South Carolina" tour.'

'We currently do not have any campaign events on the schedule.'

But South Carolina Republican Party spokesman Alex Stroman seemed to indicate that a Gingrich-Sanford synergy would exist, even if it's unintended.

'We've known for awhile now that Speaker Gingrich wanted to come to South Carolina,' Stroman said.

'He has always been the ideas guy in the party, and he's full of ideas and ingenuity. In a state like South Carolina when you have innovative conservative leaders like [Gov.] Nikki Haley and [Sen.] Tim Scott, all kinds of party officials want to come here.'

Asked if Gingrich's presence will be a plus for Sanford, Stroman said that 'it will certainly help. We'll welcome him with open arms, and it's great timing. He's been planning the visit since before the congressional election date was set, so the timing is a coincidence, but we'll certainly take it.'

'We're an early primary state and a big player in the presidential election season,' he added, 'so it's always fair to read into visits like this.'

Stroman noted that both major parties have heavy hitters coming into the state during the final days before the special election.

Vice
President Joe Biden and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will both be in South
Carolina he said, to headline their respective parties' fundraisers
before Sanford and Colbert Busch make their final electoral pushes.

A representative for Elizabeth Colbert Busch did not immediately respond to emailed requests for comment.

Gingrich, seen at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference with wife Callista, could put himself back in the presidential picture with a late-April trip to South Carolina, something he's not ruling out

Allen Olson founded the South Carolina TEA Party, later leaving the group when he said it lost its original focus on fiscal issues. He predicts his state's conservatives will support young candidates instead of the 69-year-old Gingrich

The former speaker was a surprise
winner in South Carolina's GOP primary race last year, buoyed by tea
party enthusiasts who saw him as the most authentic fiscal conservative
in the race. But even that group is now casting him in a supporting
role.

'In our world of American Idol elections, I wouldn't expect to see any of the 2012 challengers again,' Charleston Tea Party spokeswoman Joanne Jones told MailOnline.

'Newt
has an extraordinary mind and will surely contribute enormously to the
dialogue and work hard to elect a Republican president,' she added,
staying away from the suggestion that the 2016 Republican contender
might even possibly be him.

It's impossible to overstate the importance of the tea party contingent in South Carolina politics, but it's common to overestimate the movement's level of organization. Gingrich's victory there came at the expense of Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, when several tea party segments abandoned her in a whirlwind of uncertainty.

Bachmann partisans told the Columbia Free-Times in late 2011 that Gingrich's camp was, literally, paying South Carolinians to support him. (Gingrich's people flatly denied it.)

But a rift grew, and the Columbia tea party group was the biggest to break, led by its founder Allen Olson, a colorful organizer who left to campaign for Gingrich after it sided with Bachmann.

In happier times, South Carolina's then-Governor Mark Sanford appeared with his wife Jenny at a White House dinner in 2009. The Sanfords later divorced after Mark cheated on Jenny with an Argentinian journalist

Sanford campaigns with fiancee María Belén Chapur, the woman he cheated with. Sanford is trying to make a comeback after his political career was derailed in 2009 after he admitted he was having an affair

'I'm hoping he does run again,' Olson
said of Gingrich when MailOnline called. 'The more people in the race,
the more chances we have.'

But 'in the grassroots movement, it's going to be between Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.'

Gingrich 'will be well-received down here,' Olson explained, 'and it's too early to rule anybody out. But he's got to keep coming up with new and bold ideas that focus on the national debt.'

'I kinda hope he doesn't bring up the moon space station again.'

Olson said he is concerned that if the tea party movement were to warm to another Gingrich overture, it would only prove that it has strayed too much from its original focus on economic issues.

'They've started getting into too many causes and spreading themselves too thin,' he said of his old comrades.

'It's become a mouthpiece for the Republican Party. When they started working on social issues, that's when I left.'

Gingrich seemed happy with second wife Marianne in 1997, four years before their divorce, brought on in part by the former speaker's affair with Callista Bisek, now his third wife. Marianne claimed during the 2012 election season that her then-husband asked her for an 'open marriage' so that he could sleep with other women

Callista has been Gingrich's wife since 2001, the third woman he has walked down the aisle. Their affair began in 1993, nearly seven years before Gingrich's divorce from Marianne

Gingrich, however, will have to woo the
tea party in South Carolina if he hopes to repeat his 2012 success there
in three years' time. At the National Review breakfast on Thursday, he
said he still supported the GOP's seemingly interminable system of
repeated primary debates - a feature of the 2012 election that clearly
helped him, and which the Republican Party wants to eliminate.

Phasing out the old system in favor of a series of regional primaries, he said, is 'a total waste of time.'

'The goal is to win the general election,” he explained, painting the party's move as an embrace of the attitude that, 'Gee, we’re going to have a candidate so stupid we have to protect him from hurting himself, therefore, let’s have the fewest possible debates so that when he arrives in the general election we can learn in the first debate how really dumb he really is.'

'This is the World Series of power,' he said, according to The Daily Caller. 'The Super Bowl of power.'

'I liked the debates,' Gingrich added.

He also said he was involved in a GOP effort to expose more minority voters to Republican House members, a mold-breaking idea that some say is long overdue.

The all-Democrat Congressional Black Caucus and the Univision network are involved with the plan, according to Politico.

Gingrich, the political website reported, recently spent four hours 'sifting through data at Univision,' and concluded that 'half' the Latino community 'was gone' after GOP candidate Mitt Romney told a debate audience that it would be best if illegal aliens would 'self-deport' to their countries of origin.

The last election, Gingrich said, made him 'rethink what I thought I understood about politics.'

But leading a new campaign cycle with his biggest strength - that startling 2012 win in South Carolina - appears to be old advice Gingrich is continuing to follow.